


The Sixth Circle

by nikkilittle



Category: American McGee's Alice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-17
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-28 15:50:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15710376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nikkilittle/pseuds/nikkilittle
Summary: Excerpt from "The Second Sword."  With Alice temporarily gone, Hatter and Arianne lead a group of kidnapped U.S. Senators through the Circle of the Violent in Hell.  Alternate Universe: a modern American Alice in a real Wonderland.A complete copy of "The Second Sword" is located in my "Princess of Thieves" Series.





	The Sixth Circle

Chapter 28: "Medusa"

Some of the senators jerked their heads away when they realized that our visitor was not Alice. She was wearing a dark blue robe that came down to just below the knees with a sash around the waist. It was eerily similar to Alice's dark blue dress. No apron, though. Alice could have easily lost that in a battle with the dragons. The face was narrow and gaunt with hollowed-out cheeks -- the opposite of Alice's face. Still, she had an unearthly beauty that reminded me of a certain emaciated English actress.

"Contrary to what you may have learned in the world of the living, you will not turn to stone if you gaze upon my face. That is a myth that came from the Greeks. Neither am I the embodiment of female rage against a male-dominated world. I am Medusa, and I am the Queen and ruler of the Seventh-Circle demons. I am here to escort you through the Sixth Circle. We haven't much time and must leave immediately. Your guide was successful in clearing the path through the Sixth Circle. We have fifteen minutes of safe passage at the most. Hatter, you will be the guide until we reunite with your guide in the Seventh Circle. She is still in one piece, but that's about all that can be said. Rhadamanthus has her in his chamber and is caring for her."

Medusa opened a portal directly to the walkways of the Sixth Circle. Hatter strapped on the Angel's Sword and stepped through the portal first. It was an act of courage which I had not expected of him. Medusa herded the senators through, and then Medusa and I went through together last. 

The instant I stepped out of the portal the heat and steam of the Sixth Circle sent me to my knees. Ahead of me I saw all of the senators choking and gasping for breath. Great clouds of reddish steam rose from deep pits spattered everywhere in the Circle. The odor of fresh blood sickened me. Columns of fire shot through the floor of the Circle everywhere I looked and spread out against the ceiling of the Circle. The entire "sky" of the Sixth Circle was a raging boil of flame. Large flakes of burning ash floated down in a dense, slow downpour giving the illusion of being enveloped in a swarm of oversized fireflies. The flakes burned briefly when they landed on my head and skin, but mercifully they did not ignite my clothing. 

Everything was in shades of red, orange, and gray. This was the Hell of childhood nightmares. I felt dizzy, and it took all of the energy that I had just to stand up. I felt drunk. To think that Alice had fought dragons in this place. The walkways had gaps where the stone had been blown away. I thought of pictures I had seen of Berlin, Germany in 1945. 

Ahead on the walkway was a dragon that had had its neck severed from its body and its eyes gouged out. Vine-like strands reached from the head to the body and ever-so-slowly pulled the head toward the body. Behind us Alice's puzzle box gyrated wildly with a plane of strands beaded with sharp diamond-like hooks reaching out about seven feet from the puzzle box in all directions. Because the axis of the puzzle box rotated, the plane of hooks appeared as a sphere of flesh-ripping cords. Small pieces of dragon flesh sticking to the wall dripped all over the walkways. Chunks of dragon flesh on the walkways oozed liquid and put out thin threads that dragged them toward each other. The fact that the puzzle-box weapon was still here told me that it was time-unlimited and that Alice had never raised her hand for its return. Perhaps she was unable. Cooking down on the floor of the Circle lay a third dragon that had been chopped in half. Dragon blood sizzled on the rock everywhere around it. Medusa began a description of Alice's battle with the three dragons.

"The battle itself took only about 60 seconds. Your guide spent about an hour walking down the staircase toward the Sixth Circle. When she arrived, she wisely spent about an hour observing and waiting for an opportunity when all of the dragons -- there were three of them -- were out of sight. She blew a portal to what is nearly the halfway point, and from there blew another portal and used the looking glass before she stepped in. By that time the dragons had spotted her." 

"Two of the dragons headed straight for the portal Alice had just stepped through, but one was intelligent enough to head for the portal that had most recently opened. Alice was invisible when she stepped out of the portal, but the dragon was waiting for her and snatched her in his mouth. He got quite a surprise when he bit down on her. Nearly every tooth in his mouth broke off. Almost half his teeth went flying out of his mouth in all directions, and almost half of the remaining teeth broke off in Alice's body. She ended up with about fifty dragon's teeth embedded in her body about an inch deep."

"The dragon snatched her in his mouth -- he gummed her -- and tossed her up into the air with the intent to swallow her. Alice was still invisible and so was her Angel's Sword. Alice rammed the Angel's Sword down into the dragon's snout, swung around, and sat down right in front of his eyes. She pulled out that small knife she carries on her hip and gouged out both of the dragon's eyes. The dragon was not happy at all, and tossed Alice, who was still gripping the angel's sword in one hand, off his snout. She brought the Angel's Sword down on his neck and severed it." 

"By this time a second dragon had spotted the commotion, and came winging toward the scene. Alice was still invisible and flung the Angel's Sword at the second dragon's neck. Her aim was a little less than perfect -- understandable under the circumstances -- and she chopped the dragon's body in half instead of just severing his neck. That's the dragon you see -- and smell -- on the floor of the Circle down below." 

"Alice now started to flicker and was no longer invisible. The third dragon landed on the walkway and opened his mouth with the intent of flame-broiling Alice. She tossed a small metal box down the dragon's throat and started to charge that cane-looking weapon of hers. The dragon jerked backwards as if he were choking and Alice fired what looked like a laser beam at him. It had no effect. She then aimed it at the walkway on which the dragon was standing, and the dragon jumped backwards. The walkway collapsed in that spot and Alice unloaded the remainder of the cane weapon's charge under where the dragon was now standing. He was still gagging on the metal box and jumped backwards again. Another piece of walkway collapsed, and now the dragon appeared to have a seizure and exploded into a rain of small, finely-diced pieces of meat." 

"At that point, Alice collapsed onto the walkway, and it was all over. Rhadamanthus, Malacoda, and I had all watched from Rhadamanthus' chamber. Circle bosses have absolute authority over their Circles, and it is forbidden for bosses of other Circles to interfere. When the third dragon went down, it became permissible for me to enter the Circle." 

"I picked up Alice and took her to Rhadamanthus' chamber where Malacoda is waiting nearly hand-and-foot on her. Quite smitten he seems to be. Even more-so now that he has seen your guide in her natural form. Scars and all. Rhadamanthus stripped the teeth out of your guide's body and later the potion out of her bloodstream. He left the potion in just long enough to heal the wounds from the dragon's teeth. Alice had received many times the fatal dose and would have never reverted to normal had he not stripped it out. Her body would have burned up eventually from the accelerated metabolism and continuous adrenaline surge." 

"The last I saw, she seemed comfortable, but was understandably exhausted. You will meet her again in the Seventh Circle." 

The senators were all mesmerized by Medusa's description of the battle that had just taken place, and one of the women asked Medusa what they all were wondering. "Just what in the Seventh Circle is so important that she was willing to fight three dragons to get us to it?" I had my suspicion, and Medusa now confirmed it.

"Alice wanted you to see some very special inhabitants of the Seventh Circle. You will recall that you heard from Minos that Rhadamanthus, the Judge of the Seventh Circle, has the power to snatch the souls of the living and throw them into the fire while leaving the still-living bodies occupied by demons -- those small black-skinned demons you saw in Minos' Chamber. Alice believes that the sight of those inhabitants will change the course of history in your world. She has the faith of a child. That is why she has been so stubborn."

At this point, the curiosity of the senators was so whetted that I doubt that any of them would have chosen to end the journey at this point and go back home. Hatter, too, was fascinated, and his need-to-know overwhelmed his opposition to the entire venture. Medusa began a brief explanation of the inhabitants of the Sixth Circle.

“I cannot take you down to the surface of the Sixth Circle because the surface down there is even hotter than the floor of the Fifth Circle. I can give you a brief verbal tour, but that is all as we have fewer than twelve minutes before the dragon with the severed head that you see on the walkway pieces himself back together and grows a new pair of eyeballs.”

“First, let me specify who you will not find in these pits of boiling blood. You will not find the remorseful, the penitent. Only those who were willfully evil will be found here. They chose their fate. The Violent of this Circle are here because they chose to be here. Likewise, you will not find here the insane. The insane have a special place. They are not held responsible for what they could not help. Now let me describe the souls which you will find here.”

"Those who committed a single murder or rape, and honor killers are dropped in the pits that have boiling blood to a depth of about half a meter. The boiling blood slicks the walls and the bodies of the shades so that climbing is impossible. Every soul who has just been dropped into the pits attempts to climb the walls or the backs of fellow shades. It is impossible. The steam from the pits coats everything in an exceptionally slimy film." 

"The honor killers are the group with which you are probably least familiar. Honor killing is the arbitrary execution of a family member or community member who is thought to have brought shame upon the family or community. It is most common in Islamic countries or countries with large Muslim populations. Usually, but not always, the victim is a woman. The most common reasons for the honor killing of a woman are refusing to enter into a marriage arranged by the family, being the victim of a sexual assault, seeking a divorce, committing or being accused of committing adultery, and becoming active in politics." 

"In April of 2008, a woman in Saudi Arabia was murdered by her father for chatting on the website Facebook with a man. Her father will end up here. In the United States, Yaser Said was accused of killing his eighteen-year-old daughter Amina and his seventeen-year-old daughter Sarah on New Years Day in 2008 after discovering that they had boyfriends. Said remains at large at this time. In a remote village in Iran in 1986, a woman named Soraya was falsely accused of adultery by her husband who wished to rid himself of her in order to marry a 14-year-old girl. The husband bought off enough village men to serve as witnesses on his behalf to rig the all-male tribunal. Since the custom required a wife accused of adultery to prove her innocence, the result was a foregone conclusion. Soraya was found guilty of adultery -- and stoned to death. The husband will end up here when he dies. Stoning is a ghastly way to die."

"Those who committed multiple murders or rapes end up in a pit with about a meter of depth of boiling blood. Lots of serial killers down there. Jack the Ripper is, of course, down there. Kenneth Bianchi and Anglelo Buono, Jr. are down there. They were known in the media as 'The Hillside Strangler.' Ted Bundy is in one of the pits with a meter depth of blood. The ghoulish cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer is down there. John Wayne Gacy 'The Killer Clown,' John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo 'The Beltway Snipers,' Vincent Johnson 'The Brooklyn Strangler,' Richard Ramirez 'The Night Stalker,' Gary Ridgway 'The Green River Killer,' William Suff 'The Riverside Killer,' and Aileen Wuornos who was the subject of a movie are all down there boiling more or less up to their waistlines." 

"Minos really did not want to throw Aileen Wuornos into the Sixth Circle because he suspected, but wasn't sure, that she was insane. She may still end up on the Plateau with the other unjustly accused. Minos has been known to change his mind. Like any good judge, he worries constantly about making a mistake. The Insane have a special place which you will encounter in the future. In Hell, we try to avoid punishing the Insane, unlike certain countries in the world of the living. David Berkowitz, for example, who was known as 'The Son of Sam' is not found here. He was insane, and is in that special place."

"Gang killers and acid throwers also end up boiling in a meter of blood. Acid throwing attacks usually involve the throwing of hydrochloric acid or sulphuric acid into the face of a woman. The acid damages skin tissue and can expose or even dissolve bone. The result of an acid-throwing attack can include blindness and always includes permanent scarring of the face. Anywhere the acid hits is scarred. These attacks commonly occur in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, and other Asian countries. The reasons tend to vary according to the country." 

"In South Asia, acid attacks occur as revenge for the refusal of proposals of marriage, refusal of sexual advances, and refusal of demands for dowry. In Cambodia, wives have been known to throw acid into the faces of their husbands' mistresses. Tom O'Neill of National Geographic reported that acid attacks are used by upper-caste Indians to enforce the caste system. In Bangladesh and Pakistan, acid attacks are used by angry husbands as revenge against a wife they believe to have 'dishonored' them. The New York Times reporter Nicholas D. Kristoff says that acid attacks are at an all-time high in Pakistan and are increasing every year. According to the Rand Corporation, hundreds of women in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and Pakistan have had acid thrown into their unveiled faces by male religious fanatics for the 'crime' of being improperly dressed. In 2002, Bangladesh enacted the death penalty against acid throwing attacks and now strictly controls the sale of acids. Acid throwing attacks have been known to occur against men as well."

"Into the pits with about one and a half meters of boiling blood go the war criminals and war rapists. War criminals are those who ordered or participated in the mass slaughter of unarmed civilians. There are so many incidents throughout history that I haven't time to catalogue them here. Recent events of war crimes include Arab militias in the Darfur region of The Sudan attacking villages of black Africans, leaders of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda kidnapping boys and forcing them to serve as soldiers and kidnapping girls and giving them to commanders as 'wives,' Charles Taylor of Liberia who used child soldiers to kill about 250,000 people, leaders and soldiers of the Revolutionary United Front in Sierra Leone who were infamous for chopping the limbs off of civilians, the Congolese army and and its militia opponents who are both guilty of raping and pillaging, Israel attacking civilians in its endless conflict with Gaza and the Palestinians in Gaza using suicide bombing and rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, the United States' use of torture in CIA interrogations, genocide against Tutsis in Rwanda by Hutu militias, Colombian government support for right-wing paramilitary death squads, rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who engage in kidnapping, the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, and Serbian military attacks on civilians in Srebrenica and Sarajevo during the breakup of Yugoslavia. I could give many more examples of war crimes."

"War rapists are soldiers and civilians who ordered or participated willingly in mass rapes which occurred in war zones. During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 women were raped. The victims were mostly Tutsi women and girls of all ages. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Rwanda Rene Degni-Segui stated that rape during the Rwanda genocide was systematic and used as a weapon. During the Bosnian War of 1992-95, an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 women were raped. Most of the rape victims were Muslim women who had been attacked by Serbian soldiers. At the end of World War Two, Red Army soldiers of the Soviet Union are estimated to have raped around 2,000,000 German women and girls. Red Army soldiers were no better behaved in Poland where they were also guilty of mass rapes. During the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971, an estimated 20,000 Bangladeshi women were raped by Pakistani soldiers during night raids on villages. Pakistan disputes that number, but has admitted that some rapes did occur. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly known as Zaire, is the place with the worst currently occurring sexual violence in the world. Since wars broke out in 1998 in the eastern Congo, it is estimated that there are 200,000 still-living rape victims in the area. According to the United Nations, there were 27,000 rapes in South Kivu Province in 2006 alone. The final place that I will mention is the Darfur region of Sudan. According to Pamela Shifman of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), armed militias rape women and girls with impunity. This is yet another war in which rape is systematically employed as a weapon."

"Another group of offenders who get tossed into pits with about a meter and a half of boiling blood are the child abusers and molesters, and genital mutilators. You are already familiar with the concept of child abuse and child molesting. You are probably less familiar with the concept of genital mutilation. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a barbaric tribal custom which occurs mostly in Muslim African countries to girls of the ages of four to eight. The countries in which it is most common are Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Mali. In spite of the places in which it occurs, FGM has nothing to do with Islamic religious practices. According to Unicef, both Islamic and Coptic Christian leaders in Egypt reject the practice entirely and condemn it as barbaric. Most countries in Africa where FGM occurs have either outlawed the practice directly, or rely on existing laws to prohibit its practice. The practice of FGM remains legal in Sudan and Somalia. Somalia, of course, does not really have a functioning government." 

"There are four types of FGM, but I will explain only three of them. The fourth is a catch-all category of the miscellaneous. The World Health Organization defines Type 1 FGM as the partial or total removal of the clitoris and/or the clitoral hood. Type 2 FGM is the partial or total removal of the clitoris and the labia minora. Type 3 FGM is an absolute nightmare for the victim. Guy Pieters, M.D. described the procedure in the New York State Journal of Medicine. He stated that Type 3 FGM involves the removal of external genitalia including the labia minora and the inside of the labia majora. The person doing the procedure, not always a doctor using anesthetic, then uses stitches or thorns to hold the labia majora together. Sometimes a girls' legs are tied together for two to six weeks to prevent her from moving them and disturbing the stitches or thorns. When the wound is healed, the only opening that remains is a small one that allows urine and menstrual blood to escape. The first instance of sexual intercourse requires another cutting. Without sanitary conditions, FGM can lead to infections and bleeding to death. Even when done by a doctor using sterilized medical instruments, FGM can result in urinary and reproductive tract infections caused by obstructed flow of urine and menstrual blood. It can even result in infertility. Needless to say, the procedure causes girls a great deal of stress and psychological problems. Anybody who needs to barf please aim over the side of the walkway."

"Another bizarre African custom that results in the guilty being tossed into about a meter and a half of boiling blood is the practice of force-feeding little girls to the point of morbid obesity as preparation for marriage and to satisfy a male fetish for obese women. This occurs among the Moors of Mauritania. Sometimes it is done by the mothers, sometimes the girls are sent off to fattening camps in the vacation months between school years. The little girls are tortured to force them to overeat and are also forced to eat their own vomit if they gag. The idea behind the practice is that the extreme obesity triggers an early puberty so that the girls can be married off young. Moorish men think of obese wives as status trophies to show off their wealth on the assumption that a fat wife has servants to do everything for her. Most Moor girls are married at the ages of 12 to 14. You can imagine the long-term health effects of this practice. There is also the loss of physical agility and the psychological effect of being robbed of the ability to run, jump, and play like normal children. Minos has no tolerance for this abominable cruelty whether it is carried out by the owner of a fattening camp or by the girl's own mother. Into the pit the tyrant goes."

When I heard Medusa talk about the Mauritanian practice of force-feeding, I thought that perhaps it was fortunate that Alice was not around to hear it. Alice is quite athletic and, considering the way she swings around on the vines in Wonderland Woods, is probably the closest thing on the planet to a real-life Tarzan. She would have been furious at this. After we got out of this place, I'm sure she would make a point of it to visit Mauritania and blow up all the fat camps. Oh, the western news media would go crazy over that. Psycho Alice of Wonderland loose in Mauritania. Get all the Peace Corps Volunteers out of the way.

Medusa looked nervously at the dragon ahead of us on the walkway. The vine-like strands had pulled the head to within a few inches of the body. Medusa estimated that we had about six to seven minutes before the head was reattached and the eyes fully regenerated. She decided to move us and opened a portal to what she said was the dragons' perch. It was a ring-like structure that surrounded the central shaft and had a mote of lava surrounding it. Medusa had a use in mind for the lava.

We all herded through the portal following Medusa's lead, and Hatter came through last. He said he was making sure that everyone went through. He didn't count heads like Alice, though, and nobody seemed to notice. I admit that I felt nervous about the failure to count heads, and made a secretive attempt to count. Without everyone lined up, however, it proved impossible for me. Medusa had a bit more to tell us about the Sixth Circle's inhabitants.

"Completely immersed in the boiling blood, about two meters deep, are the worst of the violent. In the deepest pits you will find political figures responsible for some of history's biggest bloodbaths. The absolute worst of those, however, are likely to be found in the Seventh Circle." 

"Here completely immersed in boiling blood in the Sixth Circle is Harry Truman for two nuclear bombs used on civilians and the Korean War. Lyndon Johnson is here for the Vietnam War. Richard Nixon is here for his support of the coup in Chile on September 11, 1973 which overthrew a democratically elected president and replaced him with a military dictatorship which lasted from 1973 to 1989. The military dictator installed in Chile is in the Seventh Circle. His name was Pinochet, and Rhadamanthus will tell you all about him." 

"We have in the deepest pits land thieves who systematically deprived people of their livelihoods. For example, in Colombia, which is in the middle of a civil war, some international resource extraction companies which are interested in mining, logging, and palm oil plantations, have been paying armed groups to chase peasants away from their land. Other resource extraction companies resort to legal trickery to obtain title to lands. In Peru, President Garcia has proposed a "Law of the Rainforest" in which the government of Peru would take private title to an unspecified amount of rainforest land which currently has no official owner. He hopes to sell the land to which Peru takes official title to national and international private investors. The rainforest residents are terrified that they will simply be herded off land on which they have lived since pre-Colombian times." 

"At this point, do I really need to mention that the entire continents of North America, South America, and Australia were essentially stolen from their native inhabitants? Also the United States effectively stole the state of Hawaii when a group of businessmen overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and convinced President McKinley and the U.S. Congress to approve annexation in 1898. In 1993, President Clinton signed a formal apology to the Hawaiian people for the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. The bill had been passed by both houses of Congress."

While Medusa spoke about the land thieves, I looked up at the flaming sky and saw what looked like black threads everywhere which showed up clearly against the background of an orange-flame sky. It was Minos' tails carrying newly damned souls. Everywhere I looked I saw what looked like falling stars splashing into the pits. It was an infernal soul shower. Medusa had only a little more to say as she looked nervously into the distance.

"Also into the deepest pits go merciless judges and lawmakers, corporate entrepreneurs who make their fortunes converting food such as corn into fuel, and corporate agribusiness leaders who, instead of following the time-honored practice of raising cattle on grasslands, herd cattle into feedlots and feed them enormous quantities of corn to produce meat for the affluent while negatively impacting the supply of basic grains which feed the poor. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 7.0 pounds of corn are required to produce one pound of beef. Feeding corn to cattle to produce beef reduces the food supply. Feeding grass to the cattle would actually increase the food supply. We are nearly out of time. Isn't there something you wanted to do with your Deadtime Watch, Hatter?"

I was standing behind the Senators while Hatter was standing up at the front. I had a decent angle to see over the edge of the "Dragons' Perch." I watched as Hatter threw the Deadtime Watch without hesitation, and with an obvious sigh of relief, over the side into the lava down below, where it disappeared without a ripple.

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End of Chapter 28

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This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights. The original "Inferno" was written by Dante and is in the public domain.

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Version 3


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